The present disclosure relates to an embroidery data creation apparatus and an embroidery data creation program recorded in a computer-readable recording medium.
Conventionally, photograph embroidery has been done wherein images of photographs taken by a digital camera or those printed from films are embroidered. In this photograph embroidery, image data of photographs taken by a digital camera or image data of photographs printed from films that is captured by a scanner is used. Then, line segment data showing a shape of stitches of a thread and color data showing a stitch color is created from the image data, and embroidery data showing stitches of each thread color is thus created. In an embroidery data creation apparatus that creates such embroidery data, line segment data showing a shape of stitches of a thread is created to bring a result of an embroidery closer to photographic images. When creating the line segment data, like that disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-259268, it has been proposed that instead of creating embroidery data representing stitches in the same direction, embroidery data can represent stitches in 360 degrees covering all angles with respect to each other. To be specific, for each pixel composing image data, a direction of stitches (angle characteristic) to be arranged on the pixel based on a relationship with surrounding pixels and strength thereof (strength of the angle characteristic) is computed. The angle characteristic and strength of the angle characteristic are used to create the line segment data. The strength of the angle characteristic is computed based on luminance of the surrounding pixels of the watched pixel, and the bigger the difference in luminance from the surrounding is, the greater the value of the strength of the angle characteristic.